She was behind schedule, having programmed a script for the ISS to rotate 180 degrees and engage the thrusters exactly nineteen minutes from now.
To save time, she’d skipped putting on the modified incontinence diaper she’d normally wear when suiting up. She remembered going through a few diapers she’d found in the JPM and hanging them up to dry; if she really had to go she’d wait until she could get back to the zero-gee toilet. She’d be on EVA only for a few minutes, she reasoned, hopefully no longer than she’d taken to initially crimp the fuel line. Plus, she’d been so dehydrated that she hadn’t even peed for half a day. So bypassing the MAG, or maximum absorbency garment, was a small risk to take.
Her injuries seemed to have gotten worse: she felt stiff and achy, and incredibly tired. She tried to ignore the sullen pain, knowing that she would have plenty of time to attend to her wounds once she’d re-boosted the station.
Suddenly puzzled, she wondered where the cooling garment had gotten to. It should be right here, beside the spacesuit’s outer shell.…
Then she realized she was already wearing it. Stupid. But she remembered that confusion and loss of mental acuity was one of the first signs of the bends.
I’ve got to hurry, she told herself. Get this job done before the bends really hits.
She thought about using SAFER, the cold-nitrogen emergency jet pack. But she’d have to fasten it to the back of the suit, and she was running out of time. Feeling weak, she winced as she struggled to pull on first the lower torso assembly and then the fiberglass hard upper torso.
Fighting against exhaustion, she took three tries before she finally connected the liquid cooling and ventilation garment’s umbilical to the suit’s water supply. Then she locked the upper and lower parts of the suit with the body seal closure before pulling on her gloves and the clear-bubble helmet.
Finally sealed in the EMU, she heard the suit’s regulator and fan whining away at 20,000 rpm as she prepared to evacuate the air from the Joint Airlock. She rotated her arms and twisted her torso, trying to elevate her heart rate. Work as much nitrogen out of your bloodstream as you can, she told herself.
She knew she should have pre-breathed pure oxygen to purge her body of nitrogen to prevent the bends, but because she was so pressed for time, once again she had skipped the normal three-hour pre-breathing routine and opted for the abbreviated in-suit exercise. It was a risk she’d have to take, but in the scheme of things she decided she’d rather chance the possibility of decompression sickness than have the station slip below the point of no return as it continued to drop in altitude.
With purposeful care, she made certain that she was tethered securely and had both Shep’s knife and the EVA-modified vice grip in her equipment pouch. Then she closed the airlock’s inner hatch and started evacuating the chamber, pumping the lock’s air back into the station. Her suit ballooned slightly as the pressure dropped. When it fell below 1 psi she vented the lock and opened the outer hatch.
It swung slowly open. Using the handrails on the station’s outer skin, Kimberly pushed slowly out into the airless depths of space. For a moment she blinked in puzzlement, trying to recall how she could best find her way to the access panel. Then she got her bearings and remembered: it’s on the FGB, the next module over. She thought she must have flashed to where she had exited the JPM through the small experimental lock; with all that had happened since then, the change in her location had momentarily confused her.
She pulled her way forward. Being tethered to the station, she could move faster than she had when she’d been in the second-generation suit. She knew she could take more risk by getting as quickly as possible to the panel where she’d crimped the line.
Bending at the edge of the module, she worked her way toward the FGB, hand over hand, with the long safety tether trailing behind her, playing out as she moved toward the axis of the station.
She reached out with a gloved hand and snagged one of the conformal thermal radiators. Her spacesuited body rotated gently as she moved across the station’s outer skin toward the FGB access panel.
Her heart started thumping faster. She knew this shouldn’t take nearly as long as her last EVA; the access port was already open and the Joint Airlock was closer to the FGB than to the JPM, located at the opposite end of the station’s axis. All she had to do was de-crimp the thin stainless steel line to allow the dimethylhydrazine fuel to flow to the thrusters. A piece of cake, really … but for some reason she was finding it hard to concentrate on what she needed to do.
Pulling out the vice grip, Kimberly looped its tether around her right wrist, then grabbed the panel with her free hand. She pulled herself close, until her helmet was almost inside the opening, then carefully pushed the vice grip past the layers of mylar thermal blankets that insulated the line.
A sudden sharp pain pierced through her upper chest and neck, as if stabbing through the suit. It felt as if an army of ants crawled underneath her skin, across her elbows, chest, and thighs. Had she been hit by something on the station, or maybe a piece of space debris? The pain spiraled up in intensity: she could hardly think straight.
She started to pull the vice grip out of the access panel to see what had happened, but a vague thought seemed to grow in her mind. Her suit wasn’t breeched or even struck by some outside object: she must be experiencing the onset of decompression sickness, the bends. Her two EVAs had not allowed her to sufficiently purge the nitrogen from her bloodstream, and now all she could feel was the incredible pain of nitrogen bubbles growing in her veins. Kimberly knew she’d be incapacitated unless she got back inside the station and into a higher-pressure environment.
But she couldn’t leave. Not yet.
Gasping from the pain, her vision blurred as she refocused on de-crimping the fuel line. She had to fight through this. She wouldn’t have a second chance if she returned to the airlock and the safety of the ISS’s normal air pressure. By the time she’d overcome the decompression sickness the station could very well be so low in altitude that it would be beyond the point of ever returning to a higher orbit.
Her gloved hand shaking, Kimberly opened the vice grip and pushed it over the stainless steel fuel line. She barely tightened her grip as she moved the wrench slowly down the tubing. She felt a sudden indentation and stopped. It was where she had crimped off the flow.
Tears in her eyes, she carefully rotated the vice grip until it was nearly 90 degrees from where she’d previously crimped the line. Slowly, she closed the handle. Gently, she worked the grip back and forth. She rotated the tool, trying to ensure that the tube was now as symmetrical as she could make it.
She pulled the grip out of the panel. Grunting through the pain that enveloped her, she pushed her helmet close to the hatch’s opening. She tried to see if she could spot any indentations on the line, but she couldn’t focus her eyes that clearly.
Her skin crawling, burning, it was hard to think straight. She had to see if she needed to try again—
She felt a low vibration run through the FGB as she gripped the edge of the opening. She shook her head inside her helmet, trying to clear her vision. The engines must have engaged, she realized, commanded by the script she’d written prior to going EVA. The thrusters are working!
An incredible sense of relief swept through her pain and fatigue and growing weakness. She’d succeeded, but now she needed to get into the station as quickly as she could as the script she’d written started rotating the station 180 degrees, preparing to boost to altitude.